My @nytopinion blog on the senseless order to fire the BLS Commissioner.

The pace of job growth in 2025 has been notably better (or less bad) than 2024 in finance, manufacturing and information. It has been notably worse (or less good) in education & health, leisure and hospitality and especially construction and government.

This is awful. Reliable economic data is a key strength of the US economy. When Argentina and Greece faked economic data it contributed to major crises. I don't think Trump will be able to fake the data given the procedures. But there is now a risk plus an awful appearance.

"The best thing for the Fed over the next few months is to be behind the curve, because the alternative is to risk being ahead of the wrong curve." --Me on May 6, 2025

If I had seen these jobs numbers on Wednesday I would have been in favor of a 25bp cut. Although would still have been a tough call, underlying inflation ex tariffs plausibly at 2.5% or higher. Regardless, the Fed will get much more data before its next meeting.

Immigration the biggest factor in the jobs slowdown (but tariffs etc. matter too). One piece of evidence: unemp rate has been steadily marching up by ~0.025pp per month for the last 2-1/2 years while job growth has slowed. So actual - breakeven job growth roughly constant.

At least no one is using the word polycrisis any more.

One thing that puzzled me before today's data: GDP growth in H1 was weak, about 1.2%. But job growth was relatively strong. I was just telling someone yesterday that one of them was likely wrong. It turns out it was the jobs side that was wrong & both signals now consistent.

The jobs slowdown is here with 73K jobs in July & large downward revisions to May & June bringing the average to 35K/month. Not quite as bad as you might think because steady-state job growth is much lower in a low net immigration world but unemployment still gradually rising.

Just gonna say: if you were questioning the integrity of BLS statistics based on last month's jobs report, this month's brutal jobs report should be all the proof you need that the books are not getting cooked.